On August 21, 1931, Cumberland Falls State Park became the third
Kentucky state park to receive Commonwealth endorsement. Many
factors were involved in this achievement,1 but perhaps
the most significant and continuing force behind the establishment
and development of the park as we know it today was a man from
Corbin, Kentucky -- Robert Blair. Described from the 1930s on
as the "Keeper of the Keys" to the park or "Mr.
Cumberland Falls," this doughty, feisty, energetic and undaunted
preservationist fueled a community's protective concern and inspired
state and national support not only to establish Cumberland Falls
State Park but to preserve it against all assaults. Much like
an advance observer for a rifle platoon or a cavalry patrol in
the Old West, Blair was always there to sound the alarm when hostiles
revealed their presence.

What were the dangers? From Blair's point of view efforts to reshape
the natural characteristics of the park are, particularly the
falls itself, represented destruction of God-given beauty. The
only changes he countenanced were those that offered opportunities
for more people to view and enjoy that which God had wrought.
Hence, entrepreneurs who desired to use the natural resources
of the area for private gain were enemies. Those who wished to
preserve it as much as possible in its natural state were friends.
For Blair there was no room for compromise.

Thus when the Cumberland River Power Company, one of multiple
subsidiaries of Sam Insull's Midwest Utilities company, prepared
to erect an eighty-seven-foot-high dam upstream to divert water
from the falls for hydroelectric production, Blair was alarmed.
From that point on until the electric company sold its rights
to the state of Kentucky, "Mr. Cumberland Falls" fought
energetically against the proposition. He was not alone. Before
the struggle ended, Blair's efforts inspired strong support from
Corbin citizens, Kentucky newspapers, congressional progressives,
and an increasingly strong national preservationist movement across
the United States.

The first step came in 1927 when Blair and three other locals
drove an automobile eighteen miles from Corbin to the site of
the falls using an old logging trail. The ten-hour round trip
prompted Corbin citizens to band together and build a road including
a thirty-foot-high trestle dryland bridge.

The job took two months and stimulated national as well as statewide
interest. It also prompted those who supported construction of
a dam to greater efforts. The seat of those efforts was Williamsburg,
Kentucky. Attracted by the possibilities of a large lake that
would back up to their community, leaders of the town became allies
of the Cumberland River Power Company. Lawyer H.H. Tye, for example,
argued that parks were a waste of time, appealing only to the
"idle rich," while the dam would enrich the area through
tax revenues and by expenditures of construction workers.2
One McCreary county man insisted that people he represented overwhelmingly
favored a power dam3 even though most people from the
Corbin area opposed it.

Corbin citizens reacted by establishing the Cumberland Falls Preservation
Association dedicated "solely" to the establishment
of a state park at the fall,4 although it seemed that
the federal government would soon grant a license for dam construction.
When Federal Power Commission chairman Herbert Work, who was also
Secretary of the Interior, came to Kentucky in 1928 to investigate,
he found people at a Middlesboro public meeting grimly hostile
to preservation. They talked of the inaccessibility of the falls,
the surrounding and unattractive wasteland full of black snakes
and seed ticks. Putting all this under a deep lake seemed to them
to be an idea whose time had come. Only one man present objected
to all this -- Robert Blair of Corbin. With the courage and determination
of an Horatius at the bridge, he denounced what he called the
shortsightedness and greed of those around him. One person threatened
him, and according to Blair, was forestalled only by Chairman
Work's statement to the people that all should "remember
that one righteous man [could have] saved Sodom."5

Later Blair and his CFPA cohorts got Work to visit Corbin and
kept opponents away while they argued their case.6
The beleaguered FPC chairman did not commit himself, other than
to agree that erection of a power plant would probably destroy
the falls. Work spared himself further consternation by resigning
from the cabinet to become the chairman of the Republican national
committee. Supporting the election to the presidency of his friend,
Herbert Hoover, may have seemed a less controversial responsibility.

It soon became apparent that the controversy was basically between
preservationists on the one hand and business promoters on the
other. Money to purchase the land from the Cumberland River Power
Company had been available for over a year in the form of a gift
from Senator T. Coleman du Pont of Delaware. The only stipulation
was that the area had to be maintained as a park, a wild animal
preserve, and a bird sanctuary.7 Kentucky Governor
Flem Sampson tried, without success, to persuade du Pont to combine
a state park with hydroelectric development. Consequently, the
governor, a Barbourville native, worked out an arrangement with
the power company whereby the governor would support power dam
objectives in exchange for $250,000 from the company to finance
a state park.8 Hence the issue was joined. Both sides
favored a park. One side wanted a park with some evidence of modern
development. The other believed that industrialization would destroy
the very values that a park would preserve.

A succession of fortuitous events favorable to preservationists
ensued. New FPC personnel in the Hoover administration visited
Cumberland Falls itself to study the situation first hand. They
might have reached a verdict favorable to power dam enthusiasts,
but the chairman of the FPC at t hat time, Secretary of War James
Good, died from blood poisoning following an emergency appendectomy
only five weeks after the visit.9 With the FPC decision
placed on hold as a result, the battle shifted to Frankfort, Kentucky,
where preservationists now mounted a powerful assault against
Governor Sampson by joining with Democrats determined to undermine
his gubernatorial authority in its entirety. Even the governor's
subsequent veto of legislation to accept du Pont's gift could
not withstand the pressure. The preservationists were totally
victorious.10 By dedication time in August 1931, the
intense emotion of the past had abated. Joining in the ceremonies
were representatives from each side.

Yet on the local scene it was apparent that Corbin had triumphed
over Williamsburg. The state immediately moved to improve the
now somewhat rundown road to the falls from Corbin. Corbin locals,
particularly Robert Blair, became much more involved in promoting
tourism in the area, protecting the park and identifying with
its future. Anything affecting the region was now a matter of
basic concern to "Mr. Cumberland Falls" and his allies.

In 1965 the Corps of Engineers proposed to build a power plant
by tunneling around the falls and diverting water to make electric
power. Blair led successful resistance by reestablishing the CFPA,
and the Corps of Engineers found other projects to play with.11
Nine years later when artful money-makers endeavored to
install a chair lift near the falls, which would have necessitated
the hacking down of considerable timber, Blair again blew his
trumpet. Governor Wendell Ford halted the project.12

I met Robert Blair in 1981 about ten months before his death.
His office at that time was in the First National Bank building
in Corbin, located somewhat apart from the rest of the financial
institution on the second floor. He called it a museum office
and he was right. Over the entry was his named followed by the
simple title -- "Conservationist." He was chairman of
the board of the bank, but nothing in the office suggested that.

Those who pride themselves on orderly decor would have been appalled
by the clutter, but also impressed by the wide variety of treasured
mementos. Arrowheads gathered in his many hikes through the forests
around Corbin lined the wall. Stone knives, hoes, and cooking
utensils used by Indians in the area were there. Old pictures
of the falls were everywhere. There was even the gold-plated spike
that was removed from the old trestle bridge when it was replaced.

Other items, and there were many, did not relate to the falls,
but reflected Blair's lifelong love affair with the outdoors.
Mounted fish and the heads of a mountain lion and four bears,
plus the stuffed bodies of a bobcat and a beaver, stood out prominently.
Lest one regard him as only a trigger-happy sportsman, Blair was
quick to explain that he not only killed but he also consumed
the meat of his prey. The three-hundred pound mountain lion, for
example, at one time connected to the head now on his wall, had
been processed into hamburger-- the best hamburger he ever ate,
he said.

Blair was famous also for his varmint dinners. Such affairs have
had a special prominence in the history of Kentucky politics,
but none approached what Blair provided periodically for his guests
in a cabin on the Cumberland River. Here he entertained friends
from time to time with spectacular collections of dishes. In 1963,
for example, at a surprise birthday party for a colleague, Blair
provided the following to a large group: shark fin soup, quail
eggs, fried grasshoppers, caterpillars, sauced clams, smoked rabbit,
roast leg of elk, barbecue of Puma sirloin, topped off by a dessert
of snowballs frozen from the previous winter. 13

Now Robert Blair is gone and his varmint dinners are only a memory,
but the museum items relative to the park remain. Above all, his
beloved Cumberland Falls is unchanged. Those who endorse preservation
in its finest form undoubtedly hope his legacy will be maintained
and honored.